Election Day for School Boards Mixes Apathy, Anger and Disgust

By JACQUES STEINBERG

Published: May 8, 1996

It was school board election day in New York City yesterday, and Carmelo Saez Jr., ousted as president of his board by three successive chancellors on charges of corruption and patronage, was making the rounds of polling places in the West Bronx.

At one, he angrily told poll workers to be sure not to lose the votes cast by himself, his relatives and his friends -- as, he asserted, they had three years ago.

In Chinatown, witnesses said, more than 100 Chinese-American voters were turned away from a District 2 polling site, despite their registration cards.

And on the Upper West Side, one of the handful of voters who turned out yesterday morning, Stephen Schiller, pronounced himself baffled at the concept of selecting a new District 3 board by ranking his choices, one through nine, on a paper ballot. "It's weird," he said. "It's squirrelly. It's surreal."

In a year when everyone from parents and teachers to the Mayor and Speaker of the State Assembly have called for the abolition of the city's 32 community school boards, the oft-criticized failings of decentralization were on display yesterday: political maneuvering, low voter turnout and confusion over an antiquated process in which voters use cardboard boxes. It will take city election officials weeks to count the ballots. "In an age where we do everything by computer," said Robert Berne, dean of the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University, "it is ironic that we trust our children's future to paper and pencil, which can easily be manipulated."

"We can no longer say that it is democratic if no one votes," he added. "We are clearly ceding the power in the system to special interests."

This year, with no compelling social issues drawing voters to the polls, like condom distribution or teaching tolerance for gay people, the turnout appeared lighter than the record 12.5 percent in the last board elections, in 1993, officials said.

The most widely discussed races were in four districts taken over by chancellors for corruption or educational mismanagement.

They are the boards in District 16 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, which Ramon C. Cortines, then the Chancellor, took over in 1995; and District 17 in Crown Heights and Flatbush, Brooklyn, which he took over in 1994, both because of mismanagement; and those in Districts 7 and 9 in the South and West Bronx, which Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew suspended earlier this year amid allegations by school investigators that Mr. Saez and other district officials had coerced school employees to attend fund-raising events.

In the Bronx yesterday, waving placards in Spanish and English that pleaded for "Education, not politics," more than 1,000 parents, students and religious leaders marched down the Grand Concourse to Borough Hall.

Organized by South Bronx Churches, a coalition of neighborhood congregations, the protesters complained that most candidates in Districts 7 and 9 were ousted incumbents, unfazed by their districts' dismal rankings in reading and math.

Oswell White, 68, a grandparent of three children attending District 9 schools, lamented that Mr. Saez had knocked four candidates off the ballot last month by challenging their petitions, leaving voters only five choices for nine seats. "The system's not working properly," said Mr. White, who planned to write in the names of six alternative candidates.

Mr. Saez had strong words for the poll workers at the senior center where he voted on West Tremont Avenue, according to the workers, who said he appeared agitated. He told them that he knew of a dozen neighbors and relatives who had voted for him in 1993 at the same site but that the final tally showed nothing for him. They said he urged them to keep a closer eye on the ballots.

In an interview later, Mr. Saez confirmed their account and said, "When they counted the votes, I came up with zero votes in my own home election district."

A spokeswoman for the election board, Naomi Bernstein, said she was unable to verify Mr. Saez's claims yesterday. But she said he might have violated the election law by making comments to the poll workers. "To berate them for what they did three years ago," she said, "I don't think that is correct."

At Public School 130 on Baxter Street in Chinatown, confusion was rampant, said Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund. She said that more than 100 parents were told their names were not on the registration logs. In such situations, voters are usually instructed to fill out special "affidavit ballots." But the polling site quickly ran out, she said.

Edward F. Stancik, the special commissioner of investigation for the schools, said his office was examining several similar allegations from Chinatown and elsewhere.

Counting all the paper ballots of those who did vote is cumbersome. Ms. Bernstein said that the ballots are supposed to remain sealed in the boxes in which they were cast and kept under police guard until they go to Board of Elections headquarters in each borough today.

The actual counting usually takes weeks. It will not start until May 17, when the absentee ballots are received and verified. In the past, more than 100 Board of Elections officials have spent as much as two months apportioning votes of first place, second place and on down to ninth for the 288 seats at stake.

This year, computers will be used, and Ms. Bernstein said the results could be known before the end of the month.

Voters outside polling places yesterday said they had voted for a variety of reasons: concern about budget cuts, academic performance and civic duty.

"I vote for President," said Maureen Meade, who voted in the District 3 election on the Upper West Side. "I vote for Mayor. It gives me the right to complain."

Photos: Voters (very few of them, judging from the polls at PublicSchool 80 in Queens, above) chose New York's 32 local school boards yesterday. (Steve Berman for The New York Times); The South Bronx Churches held a march to demand school board reform, top. (Librado Romero/The New York Times)(pg. B8); At Public School 80 in Jamaica, Queens, Lucia Akins cast a paper ballot yesterday in a cardboard box. The paper and box are two of the cumbersome procedures in a much-criticized and investigated election system for New York City's 32 community boards of education. (Steve Berman for The New York Times)(pg. B1)